Violence spreads to other provinces Violence spilled over from Tibet into other provinces yesterday as Tibetans defied a Beijing crackdown and the Dalai Lama warned that the area faced "cultural genocide" and appealed to the world for help. Monday, March 17, 2008 Violence spilled over from Tibet into other provinces yesterday as Tibetans defied a Beijing crackdown and the Dalai Lama warned that the area faced "cultural genocide" and appealed to the world for help. Protests were reported in Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces, all home to Tibetan populations. "They've gone crazy," said a police officer in Aba county, Sichuan, one of four provinces with large Tibetan populations, her voice trembling over the telephone even as the main government building there came under siege. The officer said a crowd of Tibetans hurled petrol bombs, burning down a police station and a market in the county's main town, and also torched two police cars and a fire truck. Security forces fired tear gas and arrested five people. The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said paramilitary police shot and killed at least seven protesters. A police officer, reached by telephone, denied this. One Tibetan resident in Aba said there was widespread talk of 10 or more dead. "Now it's very tense. There are police going around everywhere, checking and looking over people for injuries," said another resident of Aba, adding that many of the rioters were students of a Tibetan-language high school. Supporters of the Dalai Lama said 80 people had been killed during the protests in Lhasa and at least another 72 injured. Xinhua News Agency says at least 10 civilians died. The protests come after five days of protests in Lhasa escalated into violence on Friday, with monks and others torching police cars and shops in the fiercest challenge to Beijing's rule over the region in nearly two decades. Another Aba resident said there was a clash between monks and police after a protest. He said one policeman had been killed and three or four police vans had been set on fire. The Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy said at least seven people were shot dead in Aba. In Qinghai, 100 monks defied a directive confining them to Rongwo Monastery in Tongren city by climbing a hill behind the monastery, where they set off fireworks and burned incense. The act frayed tensions. Shops were shuttered, and about 30 riot police took up posts near the monastery. In Gansu, more than 100 students protested at a university in Lanzhou, said Matt Whitticase of Free Tibet. Witnesses said a curfew was imposed in Xiahe city in the province yesterday, a day after police fired tear gas on a 1,000 protesters, including monks and ordinary citizens, who had marched from the historic Labrang monastery. Loudspeakers on the streets repeatedly broadcast slogans urging residents to "discern between enemies and friends, maintain order." US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on China "to exercise restraint" and expressed concern at reports of "a sharply increased police and military presence in and around Lhasa." AGENCIES